There are a variety of different apparatus which have been disclosed in the prior art for the cooking of food by boiling. In particular, there has been disclosed a number of devices which are designed to boil eggs. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 1,433,824 to Jensen, a device is disclosed in which individual whole eggs are placed in individual receptacles which are in fluid communication with each other. When the device is placed upon a stove, a small amount of water placed in each receptacle quickly boils and cooks the eggs. Another device, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,063,609 to Shaw and Chapman, receives an egg and is then placed inside of a boiling kettle. However, none of these devices disclose any associated means for timing the cooking of the egg.
One of the simplest devices which times the cooking of eggs is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 578,059. In this patent, a kettle in which the eggs are boiled is provided with a lid having a time alarm clock mounted thereon. Another timer and alarm is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 580,815 to Witte. In this patent, the timer consists of a metal tube with a small hole in the bottom which is filled with water and which is mounted on a lever. When all of the water finally leaks out of the tube, the lever moves and hits a bell indicating that a time period has passed. A rather complicated timer dependent on the rate of steam generation and leakage is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,536,369 to Hubbard. The device disclosed in this patent is designed to boil an egg inside of a closed kettle. While some steam escapes through a selected sized opening, the steam pressure in the kettle continues to rise until a pop valve is actuated allowing steam to pass through a whistle on the kettle.
While all of the above devices may function to produce a boiled egg, there are a number of disadvantages with each device. For example, in all of the devices except the device disclosed in Jensen, a large volume of water must be boiled. This is very inefficient and a waste of heating energy. Devices without timers also necessitate some external means of measuring the cooking period.